Author: Rick Mc

There are two main models:

1) private ownership
2) volunteer Board of Directors

It would be difficult to find a professional gymnastics coach who prefers a Board of Directors.

The privately owned club — especially if it is owned by the coaches — is far more stable. More predictable. It is governed by the free market.

Volunteer Board managed clubs are up and down. They have good years and bad.

Most of the club management horror stories I hear come from volunteer Board clubs.

Yet in Canada most clubs are governed by a volunteer Board. This is a legacy of well-meaning federal government legislation. Socialist thinking is that “democratic” governance is better over the long run than the free market.

In fact, it has hobbled the development of gymnastics clubs in Canada. The gyms in the USA without a penny of government assistance are far ahead.

Ultimately the privately owned clubs anywhere will be more efficient. Quicker to react. More decisive.

That opinion stated — my own club is run by a Board of Directors. And (right now) it is an excellent Board. We met this past weekend with an expert consultant in the field of strategic planning for non-profit organizations.

She strongly recommended this book.

The Strategic Board: The Step-by-Step Guide to High-Impact Governance

If you have input on this topic, please leave a comment.

Finally some good news on this blog about Bela and Marta.

Or is it?

Famous former Romanian Gymnastics coaches Martha and Bela Karolyi, the Comaneci’s coaches, were awarded on Monday the “Trainer of Legend” Trophy during a festivity in Bucharest. The ceremony was attended by renown sportsmen and former disciples, including former gymnasts: Nadia Comaneci, Anca Grigoras, Georgeta Milea (from Montreal ’76 team) and Luminita Milea, Marilena Vladarau.

It’s nice to see this happen. Since they defected to the USA in 1981 the relationship with Romania has been rocky. Time to let bygones be bygones and work together towards the betterment of the sport.

But before we get too warm and fuzzy, it’s important to read the rest of the very critical coverage of the event by Romanian-Gymnastics.com:

Martha & Bela Karolyi, Comaneci’s coaches, awarded Trophy

presenter – Mariana Bitang

(via Gymbrooke)

UPDATE: Felipe sent us a link to a routine performed by Danny Rodrigues from France.

The best Victorian I’ve ever seen. Some judges would give it credit.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

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original post – March 26, 2007

It’s actually a Front Lever with the body held at the level of the rings. Or, perhaps, an Inverted Maltese Cross. I tried it several times, but failed. Each time I was able to lift my body to ring height while rotating from a hang into a front lever – but I could never hold the position more than half a second.

Mark Williams, Assistant USA Gym Coach, informs me that it was first done perhaps by a Russian, and is called a Victorian Cross. In his 25 years in gymnastics he’s never seen it.

source – John Gill (legendary rock climber)

I’ve never seen it done. For me it’s still a fiction I first read about in International Gymnast magazine.

Here’s an attempt by Stanford’s Peter Derman – at Cal in 2005.

Click PLAY or watch the video on YouTube.

(Thanks Coach Dag, Florida)

Brooks Gymnastics can’t be the first club to match Crocs with their team uniform.

larger version – flickr

This, sadly, seems to be the week of Romanian coach abuse.

Gymbrooke cited an award of infamy presented to both Bela and Marta by Romanian-Gymnastics.com:

… cruel, brutal and abusive, Soviet-inspired gymnastics training system in Romania, Bela Karolyi and wife Martha got the “deserved” recognition: “The Platinum Cactus Award” from the most popular webiste (Google) about Romanian gymnastics: http://www.romanian-gymnastics.com.

Gymbrooke Sports News

I do not know either Karolyi personally, but many friends whose opinions I trust have many positive things to say about both.

Where would our sport be today without Nadia?

It reminds me of the Chinese saying: Mao was 70% good, 30% bad.

Have the Karolyis ever gone “too far” in their many decades of coaching at the highest level?

Undoubtedly.

The future of our sport is not the Karolyi way. Doing 10 full routines the day before a major competition was stupid when Nadia did it in 1976. And it was stupid when I saw Marta Karolyi do the same thing in recent years with US teams.

Smarter, safer coaches will succeed them, no doubt.

But are the Karolyis systematically “cruel, brutal and abusive”?

Hardly.

Karolyi controversy – Wikipedia

The Orange County Register in 2004 researched an article on elite women’s artistic gymnastics. I’m suspicious of the questions posted.

How the investigation was put together

Over the past nine months, The Orange County Register was able to locate and attempted to contact 179 female gymnasts who competed for the U.S. national team from 1982 to 2004. The figure represents more than half of the roughly 300 women who competed on U.S. junior and senior women’s teams during this period …

Of those contacted, 122 agreed to be interviewed. The parents of four women who are either current or recent members of the U.S. junior team agreed to describe their daughters’ experiences and are included in the Register’s statistics.

In the first such survey among U.S. national team members, the women were asked:

Whether they had broken bones or injuries that required surgery during their careers. They were asked to list all such injuries and give their age at the time of the injury and the circumstances in which the injury occurred.

Whether they suffered broken bones or injuries that required surgery after ignoring warning signs.

Whether they returned to the sport after an injury against a doctor’s advice.

Whether a medical trainer was present in their gym during practice.

Whether they felt comfortable talking to their coaches about injuries.

Whether they had been criticized by their coaches for talking openly about their injuries.

Retired gymnasts also were asked to detail post-career health problems related to gymnastics.

How the investigation was put together

Do you find the questions loaded?

Journalists do not have much incentive to publish good news.

The resulting article is shocking. I feel it is somewhat biased and alarmist, as well.

All artistic coaches should certainly read it: Gymnasts in pain: Out of balance , By SCOTT M. REID.

I won’t cite statistics in this blog post. Read them for yourself.

But the article gives many case studies of injuries. Then goes on to suggest they were caused by neglect and abuse. That coaches and administrators are to blame.

The journalist cites some stories (e.g. Kerri Strug and Christy Henrich) in a way I find deliberately incomplete.

NOW — I agree many of the top US girls have insufficient medical support. I completely agree that 36-40hrs / week is overtraining for almost every athlete.

I agree that some of the top coaches in the world are astonishingly poor at keeping their athletes healthy. (Look to Kelly Manjak, career coach of Olympic FX Champion Kyle Shewfelt, to see how to do that correctly.)

There is no way I would let SOME of the coaches mentioned in the article coach my own daughter.

But unlike the journalist, I blame the FIG rules for most of the problems. If anyone should have trouble sleeping through the night it should be the ladies of the FIG Women’s Technical Committee.

Are there injuries in FIG gymnastics amongst the top 120 girls and young women in the USA?

Absolutely.

Are they more severe than amongst NCAA Male and Female athletes? Than the FIG Male gymnasts in the USA?

I doubt it.

Gymnastics is a very, very difficult and demanding sport.

Do not aspire to compete at that level unless you know and respect the risks.

Please leave a comment below.

Gymnasts in pain: Out of balance , By SCOTT M. REID.

Congratulations! This is great for Mexican gymnastics. Elsa won Bars and Floor.

As usual, GymMedia has by far the best on-line coverage including details on routines of the finalists.

Elsa is on a roll having recently finished 3rd AA at American Cup.

Oksana Chusovitina, 31-years-old, won Vault. Fan, Ye won Beam

WORLDCUP Cottbus 2007: Women’s Apparatus Finals – GymMedia

The highlight of the Men’s competition was that two gymnasts competed Tsukahara double pike — and that they finished 1st and 2nd. (Du, Wei (CHN) – 16,200
2. Bohail, Thomas (FRA) – 16,112)

Men’s Vault is by far the most extreme and even dangerous apparatus right now.

WORLDCUP Cottbus 2007: Men’s apparatus Finals – GymMedia

World Cups are fantastic events to see up-and-coming stars too. The Latin American countries are definitely on the rise.

photo right – Pudgy Stockton holds Glen Sundby in a handstand.

Back in the day, I knew Glenn Sundby as the editor of International Gymnast magazine. He is still emeritus Publisher today 50-years after it’s founding in 1957.

He later founded the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1986. Initially located in Oceanside, California, it was moved into Oklahoma City in 1997.

Glenn Sundby I also knew as the “Have a Happy Handstand” man. He regularly published unusual photos of handstands.

We’re going to pay tribute to Glenn’s legacy on this blog by posting our own handstand photo series.

If you have a good one in some unusual location — Castle Rock, New Zealand, for example — send a copy by email (from top of the home page) and we just might post it on this site.

USA Gymnastics Online: Technique: Hall of Fame Has a Good Beginning … Again

Have a Happy Handstand!

We’re restarting the great tradition begun by Glenn Sundby (International Gymnast magazine) of posting wonderful handstand photos. If you’ve got one, email it to the website editor.

Marcel, a visiting student from Germany, doing a one-handed handstand on Castle Rock above Christchurch City.

handstand on Castle Rock – photo by Jon Sullivan

Thanks to Curt Gibbs for a book recommendation.

The author, GuruPrem Singh Khalsa, was a USC scholarship gymnast.

It’s a book on how to do postures in Yoga correctly, or for that matter how to move correctly.

Divine Alignment – official website